The bill’s sponsor says greater oversight is needed for Texas’ largest county as county officials have vowed to fight the legislation in court.
Texas Republicans have muscled through legislation allowing unprecedented state interventions into elections in Harris County, the most populous county in Texas, threatening to drastically overhaul elections in the Democratic stronghold.
The bills targeting Harris, which would eliminate its chief elections official and allow state officials to intervene and supervise the county’s elections in response to administrative complaints, are headed to the governor’s desk.
Lawmakers say they’re responding to repeated election issues in Harris County, which includes the city of Houston. The county, for its part, has signaled it will challenge the bid to remove its elections administrator and is portraying the bills as a partisan power grab and the latest in a series of legislative moves by Texas Republicans to tighten access to the ballot in the wake of the 2020 presidential election.
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